BetterJava: The Azul Systems Blog

“Windows NT addresses 2 Gigabytes of RAM, which is more than any application will ever need.” – Microsoft, on the development of Windows NT, 1992 Whilst the above quote is clearly no longer true, one of the misconceptions I often come across when talking to people about Azul’s Zing JVM is how much memory it

That was the report from one of the world’s largest e-commerce sites. They worked hard to make their holiday shopping season a success, and here’s what they reported after Black Friday 2016: “We had an awesome and a BORING holiday. Yes, I said BORING, which is what me and my team worked really hard for.

I’m really not sure how I stumbled across this link, but it was a while ago and I put a reminder in my diary so I’d remember the twentieth anniversary of the unveiling of the @deprecated javadoc tag. As such I thought some reflections on this would make an interesting blog entry. When Java was

This is a quick note for developers who are tracking Java 9. We’ve just uploaded new OpenJDK pre-release builds of Java 9, matching project source build 136. This build incorporates OpenJDK Java 9 code as of September 14, 2016. The pre-release binaries are also trackable as Zulu 9, release 8. Zulu 9 is available for

Earlier today we made the following announcement, aligned with the Windows Server 2016 launch at this week’s Microsoft Ignite. Highlights of the announcement: Azul’s Zulu Enterprise now includes 100% open source, certified builds of OpenJDK with support for Windows Server 2016 Ideal for organizations and developers that prefer open source and want the peace of

There were two interesting pieces of news this week related to the use of Java in embedded devices to help power the so-called “Internet of Things” (IoT). The first is the results of a survey carried out by the Eclipse Foundation, (there’s also a slide deck) asking IoT developers about what they’re doing and what

In my last blog entry, I used a small piece of code I was working on to demonstrate how pre-JDK 8 code using external iteration could be converted to use streams with a powerful standard collector. I also highlighted the problem that can arise when exceptions can be thrown from within a Lambda expression used

I’ve been using JDK 8 for over two years now and have found the new functional style of programming it provides really powerful. The thing that really impresses me about lambda expressions and streams is how I keep finding places where I am just blown away by how simple they make things. Let’s have a

Here at Azul, a large part of our business is improving the performance of Java applications through improvements to the JVM. The key to determining where improvements can be made is through accurate measurement of how a system performs. This is far from simple due to at least two major factors: Having repeatable tests so

On July 28 we announced the general availability of Zulu Embedded (OpenJDK) for ARM v7 and 32-bit v8 designs. We also announced our embedded processor roadmap for the next 6 months, which includes ARM (32 and 64-bit), Intel X64 (32 and 64-bit), PowerPC and MIPS processors. Fully-supported Zulu Embedded builds of OpenJDK for 32-bit ARM

I’ve often heard the term, “Ghost in the machine” in the past, but never went to the trouble of finding out where it originated. According to Wikipedia the English philosopher, Gilbert Ryle, coined the phrase as a description of René Descartes’ mind-body dualism. “What does this have to do with Java?” I hear you

Azul is launching the Silicon Valley Java Performance Meetup on Tuesday, 12 July, at the Azul Systems headquarters, 385 Moffett Park Drive, Suite 115, Sunnyvale. Azul VM Engineer, Doug Hawkins, will kick off the new Meetup at 7:00 PM with a presentation titled “What your compiler is telling you, and what to do about it”.